


Half Sunk, A Shattered Visage Lies

by yelp



Category: Eyeshield 21
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Fandom-Blind Friendly, Gen, Knights - Freeform, Magic, Monster Slaying, Quests, imperialist propaganda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24971878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yelp/pseuds/yelp
Summary: Sena rides through the unforgiving desert. He climbs the abandoned castle. He is on a quest to slay the devil. But the devil has a quest for him as well.Based onthat gorgeous comic.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Half Sunk, A Shattered Visage Lies

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this comic](https://yelpfic.tumblr.com/post/622219264910360576/venomsakura-i-really-love-this-oneshot-this-is) on tumblr and was captivated. What's the full story? What happens next? What the hell is falling in that last panel, a Yu-Gi-Oh card? I was dying to know, so I took it upon myself to write it. Ah, such is life in a small fandom. If anyone has a way to get in touch with the original artist, please let me know, as I'd love to share the story with them.
> 
> The title is from Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, though I nearly used the Horace Smith one:
> 
> _"He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess  
>  What powerful but unrecorded race  
> Once dwelt in that annihilated place."_

Sena has the dream again, but he has it more nights than not, since he returned. He's started to associate it with sleep, as much as crawling into his bedsheets, as blowing out the flame on his bedside candle, and breathing in the waxy, smoky scent of its dying breath.

He's wandering those crumbling corridors again, silent and eerie after the raging, whistling sandstorm outside, a cool balm after the unrelenting dry heat of the sun, radiating from every direction, even reflected from beneath him by the endless stretch of brilliant white dunes. 

Now the outside world is gone, sliced off cleanly by the wrought iron door swung shut behind him. No matter how many times he has this dream, passing the threshold fills him with an _ache_ that squeezes the breath from him, an overpowering loneliness that doesn't feel like it's coming from within him exactly, but from the structure itself. The way his tentative footsteps echo around the vaulting ceiling, gather and amplify in the distant corners. The sheer scale of the place, as though it was built for rowdy feasts, for crowds, for festivity, and then outlived it all, the bare husk remaining after all that it was meant to have and to hold has long rotted away. 

The architecture is striking and foreign, like it was shaped to a lilting melody in an unknown key and cadence, echoing from a strange land, or one long erased from mortal memory. He climbs stairs chipping away underfoot, to find himself in a chamber impossibly long, one entire wall of it made not of solid stone, but stately pillars, spaced to admit the last sanguine rays of the fading sun. They stain the marble floor equally red as they stain the rippling sand dunes a dizzying, distant drop below. 

At the far end of the room, he meets the devil, or so it was in reality, but sometimes his dreams take strange forms.

Sometimes the devil swallows him whole, drawing him into a gullet shaped from shadow, that stretches tightly over his eyes, mouth, throat; a rigid cocoon that permits no breath, nor movement, nor cry. 

Sometimes the devil tears into him, peeling him apart like the rind of a fruit, but he doesn't die from it, only lies in scraps scattered across the floor, catching the fiery red sunset, the ragged edges of him burning brightly, endlessly in their rays.

Sometimes he walks for years and centuries, all the way to the end of the room, and there's nothing there, only the empty corner where the devil waited, and waited, until at last even an ancient, eternal thing like this could wait no more, and the lonely ache that has followed Sena all the way here makes his heart burst in its cage. 

Tonight, the dream unfolds much like it happened in reality. He stands with his borrowed sword and shield and feels tiny, not because the devil is enormous—though well it may be, for it's impossible to tell a dividing line between the devil and the shadows swirling around it, whether the flicker of impossible, misshapen wingspan is shade or sinew—but because of the overwhelming gravity of the creature in front of him, as if there is so _much_ concentrated into this form, so much age, and power, and hunger, that it has a physical weight to it, a tangible pull. Against that, Sena is only a small, brief mortal, who needs medicine for his teacher, who was told that a pure heart, a noble quest, will make up for his other shortcomings, when the time comes. 

The shadows draw him in like a fish on a line, with whispers, with gestures, and then with force, until he finds himself on his knees before the devil. This close, the form of the creature is no clearer; all he can make out, by way of a face, is the angular suggestion of an eye, a pointed chin, and teeth—many, many sharp and jagged teeth. 

The tendrils of shadow twine his sword by the blade, and tug, and he thinks it's the end for him. He won't let go of his weapon, so the shadows slip down and take his wrist too, his arm, and now he can't let go even if he wants to. It's the inverse (the shadow) of how a sword thrust should be—a mockery of the motions he's hastily practiced. It surges him to his feet, pulls his sword arm in, into the depth of that swirling form, in until the blade pierces something more tangible than shadow, but with far more ready give than flesh. Through it all, the motion is steady and so, so gentle. It feels more like sinking into a ripe peach than the swift, sudden slash needed to split blood and bone. 

Laughter rumbles all around him, as dry as the sand that comes blowing in from beyond the pillars, scouring his face with heat and grit. When he opens his eyes, the devil is gone, and all that's left is a flat, glittering gem, no thicker than a button, angular and ruby red in the sunset.

In reality, he slept in the castle, hand wrapped around the gem, and in the morning—finding it vanished without a trace—cursed himself, for being so careless. Back through the cruel desert he rode, back to the Kingdom, back to civilization. To the palace, where Lord Takami granted him an audience, but only glanced at his slight figure, his empty hands, and shook his head. "Men nobler and mightier than you have sought to slay the devil, never to return. You cannot hope to claim the reward, with no more proof of the matter than your word."

Now, in the dream, Sena picks up the gem he once lost, and kisses it bitterly. Would this have been proof, he wonders. He wakes in his bed, with the echo of laughter still in his ear, the press of the gem still on his lips, and realizes that the flat, polished surface of it wasn't cool, like a stone, but hot—like flesh, like flame. 

The hacking cough that woke him still has not ceased—his teacher is coughing so wretchedly, the sound carries all the way from the opposite side of the house. Sena struggles out of sweat-soaked sheets, puts down his feet. 

It isn't until he stands, the cold of the floor jolting him fully awake, that he realizes he's still holding the gem. In the moonlight, it's still every bit as red as it was in the broken castle, shining with its own light, even in the absence of sun. When he presses it to his lips again, there's still that unsettling warmth to it.

Proof.

~

After he's fetched water for his teacher, the edge of the horizon is already starting to pale with dawn. He sets out for the palace, gem tucked into his fist, fist tucked into a pocket. When he reaches the palace gates, guarded by a pair of armored knights standing stately and still as statues, nerves make his fists clench tight. The sharp edges of the gem dig into his palm, almost reassuring in its bite. 

"I have slain the devil," he says to the closer guard. He wishes that he could make his voice louder; this guard is the shorter of the two, but still, Sena barely comes up to his breastplate, and can't help but feel like he's trying to shout up over the palace walls, praying that the faint sound of his voice will carry. "Lord Takami asked me to return with proof, and proof I now have. Er, I think."

The guard looks down at him, considering. "I will take you to him," he says, but there is something off about his voice. He lifts up the visor on his helmet, and Sena reads it easily there—pity, clearly etched—and his hand throbs.

The palace too has corridors, but where the castle felt aged and abandoned, the palace bustles with life, industrious as a beehive. Seeing the spotless halls, he suspects that, for all that it boasts a legion of royal knights, the palace must also house an even vaster legion of servants, to keep every inch of it polished and shining so.

He's made to wait in one of these polished halls, but the guard waits with him, taking up position next to him, lance held out the same rigid angle to the ground, body taking the same pose that he held outside, as if Sena is something equally worth guarding as the palace's front gates. 

When a secretary finally lets them in, Lord Takami takes one look at Sena, and gives a deep, careworn sigh. Turns, to look out the window, and rub at his temples. 

Undeterred—or rather, very deterred, but not seeing another option—Sena walks forward and places his fist on Takami's desk, fingers up. He doesn't open it yet.

"You claim to have slain the devil, as you have claimed before," says Takami. "Last time, you were sent away. Now, three weeks later, you return—having never left the walls of the Kingdom, yet suddenly claiming to possess new proof."

"I know not what I have," Sena says. "The devil dropped this, when I slew it. It, it must be the devil's remains." He waits until the lord and the guard are both looking, before he lets his fingers fall open. The gem lies in the center of his palm, red as blood, bright as fire. He knows of no artisan who could have chiseled this shape. It is plainly unnatural, they must see that.

"It has the shape of an eye," the guard says, finally breaking the silence, as delicately as he'd crack the shell of a soft-boiled egg. 

Sena thinks about how he only ever saw one of the devil's eyes—startlingly human, but it did have this shape, angular and narrow.

Sena thinks about how many wings he saw, and limbs, and teeth, much more than should be afforded a single creature. The devil could easily have two normal eyes, and any number of gem ones, besides.

Lord Takami sits down behind his desk. Pulls open a drawer, and from within it, one shining gold coin. "We're not unsympathetic, Kobayakawa, as to why you tell these tales. You care for an invalid, and medicine is dear." He slides the coin toward Sena, but keeps his finger on it. "His majesty doesn't wish his subjects to suffer. You may have this, but on one condition."

"I must stop coming back," Sena says.

"You must stop coming back," Takami agrees, and lifts his finger, freeing the coin.

"I'm not lying," says Sena stubbornly. But he takes the coin.

~

That night, the dream again. Sena takes the devil's face in his hands, but though he tries to pull it into the light, he can never get the whole of it to slip the shadow. There's that eye, and those teeth, but where the other eye should be, is only yawning darkness. Sena takes the gem from his pocket, for this is only a dream, and things needn't happen in proper sequence, and places it into the empty space, where it hangs as easily as the moon in the sky. Like this, he can see it's of a pair with the other, mirrored in shape, if not in material or color. 

The jaws below yawn open, unhinging like a snake's, and what comes forth is not a tongue by any means, but more shadow, to lap at Sena's hands.

Sena endures the touch, and doesn't let go. Says, "Why, devil, did you give me your eye?" He doesn't expect the devil to respond to him, it never has before. But maybe he's never asked. 

The devil's tongue flicks, and retreats back into its mouth, like the flow of a river sucked backwards. When it speaks, the voice is deep as a bell toll, whispery as the bark on a burning tree branch, right as it crackles into ash. "There's naught left... I wish to see..."

Sena shakes his head, frustrated. "Are these dreams real? Is any of this truly happening? How can I be here, again and again?"

The devil gives him a look that can only be described as condescending. The red gem drips from its socket, falls straight through shadow, clinks to the floor. Sena has the impression it's the devil rolling its eyes at him. "Are your thoughts real, child...? A flicker of impulse, in the meat of your skull... a random flash of insight... gone as quickly as it came..."

The words pierce Sena like arrows, leaving holes in him all over. He can't see them coming, can't see them go, but he feels each one. Soon enough, he's shot through, and knows that he's been killed. He falls to his knees, desperately picks up the gem, holds it as he dies, even as the words continue to rain down on him. 

"Can you call yourself real...? When your short lifespan disappears in the blink of an eye... all memory and record of you... in another blink, gone as well..."

~

After this, the devil speaks more, in his dreams. Sometimes, during the day, the gem grows even warmer in his pocket, and Sena takes it out, in case the devil can still see through it, and might wish for another sight than the lint inside his pocket. 

It's translucent, and he has the idea that the gem could be a lens, to look through. When he holds it aloft, the sun shines through it, redly, but when he peers into it, he cannot see anything beyond, as if there is no end to its depth.

On one such attempt, he's wandering through the woods at the edge of the Kingdom, hoping the eye might find him some healing herb, some magic fungus, to turn into a healing tincture or balm. As he squints down at it, he hears a call in the distance, then another. Frowning, he follows the sounds to the river, where he finds a pair of knights trying to save a young boy, caught in the flow. The boy is clinging to the root of a gnarled old tree on the bank, but when one of the knights tries to wade in after him, the armor's bulk shifts the waters, pushing the boy deeper into the rushing current, until the knight is forced to retreat.

Sena doesn't know what to do. He dashes over, and as the gem swings in his arms, it seems to shine onto a small boulder by the bank, lighting up an eye-shaped patch on its surface. Without knowing why, Sena rushes toward it instead, and pushes, right where the light was shining. The boulder rolls into the water, where it shifts a fallen log, swinging it outward. Horizontal, the log slides along the river until it is caught by other debris, where it perfectly blocks the flow of water in front of the boy, so that what was swift, rushing current is now calm and still. The knight wades in and easily retrieves the boy. The other one turns to Sena.

"How did you know to do that?" The knight takes off his helmet, revealing the guard from the gate, the one that brought him to Takami, that looked at him with sympathy, when he left with his single coin.

"The gem told me," Sena says, holding it out. No matter how he angles it now, he cannot get it to shine a patch of light onto anything around him. "The devil's eye."

The knight takes a moment to think about this, while the other one carries the boy up the bank. "It's fortunate that you observed the situation, and understood what to do, all on your own. Without any assistance." The guard gives him a long, serious look, until Sena finally nods. "My name is Shin. Your quick thinking saved that boy's life. Come find me, if there is something at the palace you need."

~

"You helped me," Sena says that night, to the devil, who ignores him.

"What is the name... of your kingdom...?" it breathes.

"Name?" says Sena, clutching his shield. In this iteration of the dream, his sword has gotten up and flown off on its own, soaring away over the desert like a wander-thirsting hawk. It feels similar to the more mundane dreams he used to have, where he's naked in public, exposed and under-prepared. "But it has no name. It's just the Kingdom."

The devil hisses, and sand sweeps through the room, raking at Sena's body, leaving red scores on his skin. "It doesn't need a name, because that's all there is... Kingdom, or not Kingdom. But once there were other kingdoms, child... Once your Kingdom had a name, for they all had names... This land was not... always desert..."

Sena dies in that dream, swallowed up by the sand, which settles over him, encases him, and hardens to stone. He makes a pitiful statue, he thinks, until the devil puffs at him in annoyance, blowing it apart, and he sees there was nothing inside the sand at all. 

~

"Are you really the devil?" he asks, another night, and the devil sighs like the howling wind.

"What is the devil? Just the title you give to your enemy... When your Kingdom didn't fill the world entire... when it had many enemies, I had a name... Now the Kingdom has hunted its enemies to extinction, and I alone remain... so yessss, child... if you wish to call me something, 'the devil' will do..."

"I, I don't think you're the devil," Sena says. "I think you're trying to help me. You helped that boy. You let me s-stab you—"

The devil lets out a chuckle that rumbles the earth. "I've forgotten... how very foolish... mortals can be..." The marble floor cracks, and then splits, and cracks again, the pieces churning against each other, making Sena stagger and throw out his arms for balance.

"If, if you did it on purpose," Sena insists, "so I could complete my quest, so I could get the money, and buy the medicine, it didn't work—" The cracks are getting closer now, the floor breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. He jumps over one, only for another to open beneath him. He rolls, hitting his shoulder hard, and finds himself sliding, sliding, as his section of floor tilts. 

"Quest or no quest... Your teacher's life or death... It's nothing to me..." 

"They don't believe I killed you," cries Sena, even as he desperately scrabbles for purchase, catching onto a sharp marble edge of floor piece. The devil lapses into thoughtful silence, while Sena hangs on with all his might. "I need proof! If you helped me before, then help me again. Isn't there anything else I can show them, to prove you're dead—"

The devil sweeps out its shadows expansively, as a human would spread his arms, but the devil's reach goes beyond a single armspan, crosses the entire room. 

"I should take something from the castle," Sena realizes, "Of course!"

"Foolish!" It sounds like a shout, and a laugh at once. "Bring them here, child... Show them where I am meant to be, but am not. There... will be your proof..."

Sena opens his mouth to respond, but the stone under his fingers gives way as well. What comes out instead is a scream, as he plummets, and wakes.

~

Sena waits for the guard to change. He comes back in the morning, and the afternoon, and the evening, and again the next day, until one morning it's Shin again, at the gates. 

"Please," he says, when Shin spots him. Sena holds out the golden coin, which he has not spent, though he's listened to his teacher cough, night after night. "I will show you, if you come to the castle. It will be empty, proof that the devil is slain."

Shin exchanges a look with the other guard, and then kneels down before Sena, so they're of a height. "You will not be able to convince Lord Takami to make this journey." 

Sena's face drops; he stares at the ground. 

"I will speak with him. Come back tomorrow. Bring your horse."

~

It was a day's journey for Sena, but with a full complement of knights, they must stop to make camp on the way. They build a campfire against the cold of the desert night, and complain about this uncivilized wilderness, so arid and desolate next to the comforts of the Kingdom they left behind. Sena finds out some of their names: Wakana, and Ikari, and Sakuraba, the other one who had been at the river that day, who had carried that boy the whole way home, dripping from every join in his armor. 

Sena takes out the gem, and they all admire it in the firelight. Some say it looks like an eye indeed. Others urge him to drop it into the flames. Sena won't do it.

"Who lived in the castle, before the devil?" wonders Sena, after they've eaten.

An odd silence meets his question. Even those chattering on the far side of the fire have fallen silent. 

"Was there really another kingdom, besides our own?" he says.

Takami gets up and walks over to him, steps deliberate and ominous. He stands too tall for the fire to paint his features with anything more than dim smudges. "The stories say that our forefathers were heroes, adventurers. They eliminated those who threatened civilization, and brought prosperity to our lands. Now, no more questions."

But which civilization? Sena wonders, and the question doesn't sound entirely like his own.

~

The castle is just as he remembers it. After visiting so often in his dreams, it feels almost like coming home. He marches up to the massive doors with easy familiarity, and is surprised to find the knights lingering behind. To them it must look foreign, he thinks, as it once looked foreign to him. He pulls open the door with great effort that suddenly lessens—Shin has stepped up, to hold it for him.

Sena enters first. It feels like he's dreaming again, except there are others here now, breaking the long silence of these sleeping halls. As they clank over the threshold, they seem even more unsettled, their confident stride become mincing, creaking steps. 

They will see, Sena thinks, and leads his way up flight after flight of stone stairway. Everything is just as he remembers, just as he dreams, and his confidence grows and grows. In contrast, the royal knights seem to weaken, flight by flight, until by the last one, they are clinging to the stone railings. One leans over it, and retches blood. 

"You've brought us into a trap," Takami gasps out. He's finally made it to the top step, and falls to his knees. Blood runs from his eyes and nose, dripping onto his armor. 

"I haven't!" Sena shakes his head, confused. "I've been here—" dozens of times, he doesn't say. "The devil was just this way, I killed it, I'll show you—"

He steps into the long chamber, with the open pillar wall. They spent a night on the road, so it's not dusk, but near midday. He points to the empty corner, where the devil should be, and turns, vindicated. But the knights are all collapsed behind him, like toy suits of armor all knocked over, tumbled askew.

"I don't," Sena shakes his head, "I don't understand."

"The gem." Shin has his hand flung out, bracing against the wall. Slowly, he sinks to the ground, his gauntlet screeching against the stone, painting a trail of blood in its wake. "If it truly is the devil's eye, then destroy it."

Sena has no intention of doing so, but he takes it out of his pocket. It's no longer red, but cloaked black with living shadows that ripple over its entire surface, like a hard candy covered with moving ants. Before his eyes, the darkness pulses and grows, drawing every shadow from the room in strands thick and thin. The form of the devil begins to form, stitched from these threads, first a face around the eye, then a body and wings around the face. When the shadows are used up, it starts on the blood instead, thin streams from every fallen suit of armor in the room, weaving with threads now crimson rather than black. 

"Why are you doing this?" Sena cries.

"I'm doing nothing," the devil says, sing-song, as its body is built. Its voice is stronger than it was in dreams, no more trailing off, no more whispers. "These very knights are descendants of the invaders who ransacked this castle, and its people, and its entire kingdom. They destroyed entire civilizations, _every_ civilization, until nothing was left but their own. The people may be gone, but the castle remembers. Now it will have blood, the blood of those original brutes, the blood that still flows through the veins of these you call royal knights."

"Have you been waiting here all this time, for revenge?" Takami says weakly. There's blood pooled all around him, but as it's sucked away, it goes so cleanly, the marble bears no trace of it. "Is it vengeance you seek? After all that the Kingdom has taken from you."

"Vengeance?" laughs the devil, and the sound is chillingly familiar, like the crash of thunder, like the break of waves. Sand blows in from the pillared wall, and this is familiar too, sweeping through the room, whirling about in buzzing fury. "Such mortal motivations you assign me. Your precious Kingdom was a challenge, and a challenge is _fun_. I broke it, just to see if I could. This is the only joy that remains to me now, and if you knights are both the cause and the casualty of my games... That's not vengeance, children. That's mere coincidence."

There is a sense of inevitability, as Sena realizes what happens next. He draws his sword and shield, and remembers all the many ways he has died here, in this room. Then he advances on the devil, regardless. 

The devil doesn't wait for him to approach. It swirls around him, sand and shadow, obscuring the room, the knights, every last scrap of light. "You can still leave this place, small one," it tells him. "Your blood bears not their guilt."

"Neither does theirs. The ones you blame are gone." Sena's voice is shaking. He'll be torn apart, he'll be swallowed up. There will be an earthquake, or choking sand, or piercing arrows. He knows the devil has many ways to kill him, and many more he has yet to experience. But for now, he lives, and he can speak. "As you said, we mortals are here and gone in the blink of an eye. These knights are not the ones who raided this castle long ago. They have done nothing to you." 

The storm eases a bit, and Sena can hear them gurgling behind him now, writhing on the ground, in clatters of metal. 

"Let us go, let us all go, and we will bring new life here. We'll populate the castle, we'll retake the desert. There could be civilization here again."

At first, Sena thinks the devil is ignoring him. Then he realizes that the streams of blood are flowing the other way, back into the knights. The devil seems to be unraveling, shrinking. Behind him, the gurgling slows. 

"Insanity..." the devil says, its voice faint and whispery again. Takami sits up, pale but alive. Shin gets to his feet, with a clank of armor. 

"We'll give this new land a name," Sena presses, "and give the Kingdom one too, because we won't be able to call it that anymore. It won't be the only one. In time there could be many kingdoms again, many civilizations, many peoples."

A long pause, before the devil reaches for him, with its tendrils of shadow, and grasps his sword again.

"No!" Sena tugs back this time, strains against the pull, even as the tendrils crawl down his wrist, his arm. He's done this so many times before. He doesn't want to slay the devil yet again. "You could even remain with us. You could live." 

"I would never... want something foolish like that..." the devil hisses in brief amusement, before it overpowers him. There was never a contest. Again, the shadows draw his sword in, and again, the devil laughs and laughs, until it dissolves, and with it, the wild, whirling sand. Sena doesn't know how long he stares into the empty space where the devil was, clutching his sword with bloodless fingers, until Shin comes up behind him and puts a hand on his shoulder. 

The knights are all weak, but recovered. 

They have not lost a single one. 

"I suppose you have slain it for real, this time," Takami says. "You will be compensated, I promise you. Your teacher will be cared for."

Sena nods somberly. Follows them out down the staircases, back through the crumbling corridors, the earlier procession in reverse. 

He's the last to leave the castle. He gives the empty halls one final look, picturing them populated with laughter, and shouting, and song. 

Then he exits to the desert, letting the iron wrought doors fall shut behind him, while the flat red gem he found, in all the confusion, burns steadily in his pocket.


End file.
